


the light you gave me

by marquis



Category: Blaseball (Video Game)
Genre: 12x100, Multi, sometimes the sun goes out and you have to engage in some self-discovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-13 13:41:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29527239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marquis/pseuds/marquis
Summary: Alaynabella Hollywood does not immediately notice when the hound stops its howling. She’s a little preoccupied with the death of the sun.(a 12x100 about layna trying to find home after the death of the sun.)
Relationships: Alaynabella Hollywood/Jacob Haynes/Moses Mason
Comments: 7
Kudos: 12





	the light you gave me

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fic written in twelve scenes of 100 words, a format from Lewis Attilio's real baseball short stories, on Medium as @pigeonize. I found out about it from @crookedsaint and their fic, [ let me let you down](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29314074).
> 
> Kind of a spiritual successor to [sense don't make what it used to be](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27112315), mostly in the fact that it is Layna/Jacob/Moses, a ship for which I am captain, first mate, and entire crew. Come talk to me about it sometime, I have a lot of thoughts.
> 
> Obligatory disclaimer: This might not be wholly lore-compliant! In fact I know it isn't, because my Moses is not the fanon-accepted Moses, and that's just the basics of whether or not you classify someone as a concrete/flower hybrid.
> 
> Title from "The Moon Will Sing" by The Crane Wives. Because all The Crane Wives is inherently about Alaynabella Hollywood. I don't make the rules.

**i.**

There is a thing inside her that hungers.

It reaches for a sun that isn’t there. It thinks of scorching sand underfoot, the smell of sulfur and the taste of ash, and it makes her bones ache in a way she was sure she’d outgrown.

She feels the tug so entirely, she almost doesn’t remember there’s something else there, too. A thing that feeds, a thing that hungers, and then her, balancing delicately between.

All this to say, Alaynabella Hollywood does not immediately notice when the hound stops its howling. She’s a little preoccupied with the death of the sun.

**ii.**

The first time is in Jacob’s apartment, lying on his unmade bed. The false sun seeps over her skin in a slow, lazy fashion; no matter how long she lies there, Layna doesn’t feel warm.

“Sorry about the sheets, Bell,” Jacob says from the bathroom doorway, toothbrush dangling from his mouth. “I bought scented detergent by mistake.”

The first time she’d spent the night, the smell of sickly-sweet chemicals had been so overwhelming he’d had to change the sheets before she could sleep. Layna frowns, pulling the fabric to her wrinkled nose. It smells faintly of lilacs.

She hadn’t noticed.

**iii.**

A trip to the Hellmouth is not what either Moses or Jacob would call a good vacation. Layna knows this. She can recognize what they’re doing long before she finds herself seated in a park full of trees wrapped in flames, beside a pond more like liquid obsidian than water.

Moses holds her hand and smiles, even though the flowers in their hair are wilting.

“How are you feeling?”

“The tug is quieter.”

They squeeze her fingers in theirs. They want this to be what she needs. Layna doesn’t have the heart to tell them the wolf is quiet, too.

**iv.**

“How did it happen?”

Layna twists her fingers into the vines of Moses’ hair and watches her lean back into the touch, smiling just slightly.

“How did what happen?” they ask.

“The flowers.”

Moses brings one hand up to grab her wrist, thumb rubbing circles over her pulse point.

“The Garden asked me,” she says, peering at Layna with her too-bright eyes through her lashes. “It wanted me to be part of it. I said yes.”

“That’s all?”

Moses pulls her arm down and presses a gentle kiss to her palm. “Why would it be any more complicated than that?”

**v.**

There are no full moons anymore.

The sky above is dark and empty, giant gaping maw that could swallow her whole. She knows that feeling; she longs for it, wants to throw herself into it.

The grass is damp and cold between her toes. A quicksilver wind twists over her, and she begs the hound to cover her. She stares at her hands and thinks of claws, of russet-brown fur and warmth.

“Please,” she whispers, though it falls only on her own hopelessly human ears.

The frustration that follows is almost enough. She can almost feel it, somewhere underneath.

Almost.

**vi.**

The thing inside her is not dead. She knows this, as surely as she knows her own name. The problem is, there are no hands to feed it. The problem is, there’s no silver moon to beckon it out of the shadows it’s hiding inside.

The Hellmouth has turned its back on her. Or maybe she turned her back first; she’s not sure.

Alaynabella spends her time in the grass and the dirt. She digs her nails in deep among the roots, trying to find a home in them. She’s not sure when she felt the need to start looking.

**vii.**

A flower sprouts behind Jacob’s ear. A small, barely-there dandelion, staining the skin a pale yellow. He watches it intently in his reflection.

“How does it feel?” Layna asks, leaning forward to tuck her chin where his neck meets his shoulder.

Jacob’s lips twist to one side, unsatisfied. “Weird.”

“You get used to it,” Moses says.

The flowers are part of them, and they wear them so well that Layna sometimes forgets it wasn’t always there. She thinks of how they shiver when she runs a finger over their petals.

The Garden claims everyone. Everyone, it seems, except for her.

**viii.**

The coffee has gone cold in her hands. The toe of her shoe scrapes against the floor. A kitten, small but unafraid, is curled in her lap.

“How do I get it back?”

Nagomi’s gaze is even, but tired. To see her fully, without floating eyes or shadows, is difficult; Layna won’t meet her eyes, can’t acknowledge the intimacy of their shared losses.

“Come home.”

Layna can’t right her wrongs so easily, she knows. The tug still lingers in the pit of her gut, a hook embedded too deep to remove even now, but her head is full of flowers.

**ix.**

The Garden has never loved her. Not the way it loves the others, Jacob or Margo or Hiroto or Nic. The Garden tolerates her, a replacement for a replacement. But then, she supposes she’s never loved the Garden much either.

But Moses makes that easier. He sits with her beneath the trees in the Memorial Forest and presses her hand against the bark and the leaves, and he names every plant with a quiet, practiced confidence.

“How do you listen?” she asks.

Moses smiles, leans in close to rest their forehead against hers. “Find the part that speaks to you.”

**x.**

The Garden is sprawling and endless and she gets lost in its depths, stepping over tangled roots and knotted weeds with determination. There is something here that speaks, and she intends to find it. There is something here that provides, and she will demand what it owes her.

She is so focused on the hunting that she almost doesn’t realize when she finds it, when the Garden opens itself to her in fields of dandelions, in wolfsbane and roses. There is nothing that is not familiar, nothing that is not hers.

Alaynabella lays down among the flowers, and she laughs.

**xi.**

Jacob walks into the kitchen with damp hair and bare feet, and Layna’s nose wrinkles in distaste.

“Did you put on cologne?” she asks. “I will make you get back in that shower.”

He freezes mid-step, eyes wide. And then Layna realizes what this means, and she’s moving forward before she can think to stop herself. She throws her arms around his waist, pressing her face against his neck. It smells godawful; she doesn’t care.

“I’m going to dump all your laundry on the bed and roll around in it. Don’t make it weird.”

Jacob strokes her hair. “I won’t.”

**xii.**

There is a thing inside her that grows.

It is life and it is green and it is blooming. Flowers sprout along its muzzle and in its tail, and mushrooms around its haunches. Its fur is like dappled sunlight through the trees.

She does not dream of sand and fire, not the way she used to. Alaynabella dreams of greenery. She feels the soft earth of decaying leaves beneath her feet, and she chases after squirrels and birds in equal measure.

The tug is still inside her. She can’t let it go. But it is quieter, now. She is content.

**Author's Note:**

> Do you have feelings about the Boston Flowers? Come find me! I'm @leonstamatis on Tumblr, and I exist on the periphery of the main discord as @blink. I will talk about the Flowers for as long as you will listen. It will be incomprehensible, but in a fun and cool way, I hope.


End file.
